For about a year and a half, since around when we moved into this house, I've had inexplicable and unpleasant health weirdness. It manifests as dizziness and often tingling in extremities and my tongue, and seems to be at least partly related to exertion. And, once triggered, seems to happen off and on for a week or two.

And medical professionals have no idea what's going on. My heart function, lung function, and brain scans using an MRI all seem fine. And I can't really tell what causes it except, inconsistently, significant exertion.

However, it also seems to effectively pull the plug on my focus (both my eyes' ability to focus and my mental ability to focus), short-term memory, and awakeness. Indeed, it sometimes feels like a bit of a cutlery thief.

This means that, among other things, I rarely remember to actually post things to this journal, no matter how often I think of things to say, not helped by the distance between my office and the front door. (see: lack of short-term memory plus a cat, metahacker, galaneia, and a lovely garden with fish in it)

This, in term, means that I am not _using_ the fabulous brain space investigation that writing things down is for me. Almost certainly not helped by thesising, mind you. Nor by minimal time away from both my house and school in which things can occur to me that might otherwise not be.

So I hadn't really noticed the fact that another side effect of this stupid health thing, besides the fact that I no longer can just _do_ physical things that I should be able to do without thought (on top, mind you, of the similar effect that the tendonitis has on the use of my hands for much that is effortful), is that I'm trying to ignore the fact that it's terrifying me.

If I can effectively randomly be basically useless for a week or two, entirely aside from sleep problems and depression, what does this mean for, say, PhD. Or full-time work, especially if it requires driving. I think _this_ is why slacking off for a bit from my thesis makes me so distressed: part of me is _convinced_ that I'm not actually up to this, for reasons of my stupid health issues affecting my brain function. Part of me is terrified that I will be useless at any sort of career, since my health issue is effectively random, and does its level best to make me useless. I've frequently been having trouble focusing on my thesis, and begin to suspect that part of this is - in addition to donwanna - _can't_.

The only reason that I managed to actually write this tonight is because I spent the entire drive making myself remember to do this, and my entire greeting to metahacker was "I'm home, and I have to go write".

I wish to anything upon which one wishes that I knew what was going on with this. I hate being dropped down to useless mentally by - apparently - doing anything particularly physical. Especially since I _like_ being able to work in the garden or go for walks in pretty natural settings or even walk down to main street. And every time I do any of these things, there's a certain fear that I will then have an attack of dizzy/tingly/etc and be useless with absolutely no warning.

I mean, if I knew more about what triggered it than what _might_ trigger it, that would be a huge improvement. One thing that used to absolutely be true of me is that I could _do_ moderate exercise (go for walks, play in a garden, etc), and be able to rely that I could do it with no problem. That I wouldn't suddenly be away from home and not physically be able to get back home. And now? That's a fear of mine. And I know I've done more than I should more than once because this kind of thing happened. But how the hell do you plan for this without cutting out everything that _might_ trigger it? I can't live like that, you know?

I don't even know where to start investigating other possibilities (although jasra did mention the possibility of allergies, oddly. Certainly can't hurt, I guess), since so far the western medical profession is entirely without clue. And I'm so _tired_ of trying to figure things out...